Turn
by nonotthatone
Summary: Clex, one-shot. A fill-in for the last scene of Reckoning ... only vaguely slashy, probably could be read as friendship.


A/N: I don't own any of this.

I saw _Reckoning_ for the first time last night … this is meant to fill in the last scene. You just get that one shot of Lex and I just love giving him more screen time.

* * *

Turn

_I'm so sorry, Clark._

_I wish there were something I could say._

_I miss you so much._

Lex turned these words and more over in his mind as he stood apart from the rest of the crowd in the cemetery. They sounded so vacuous, so cliché, so utterly beneath him. Everyone would be saying these things; he couldn't sound like everyone else. He wanted to say something to Clark that he would remember, something that was for him alone.

Something that would make him take him back.

It seemed impossible to believe such words existed. But surely if they did, Lex could think of them.

Clark and Martha Kent stood apart, too, alone together beside the grave. Regret weighed heavily on Lex, a palpable pressure when he tried to breathe; had he made a few different choices, just a very few, he might have had the right to stand beside Clark there now. He imagined how Clark must be tending, so gently, to Martha now; and he imagined how powerful it might feel to be Clark's source of strength.

Lex kept his eyes focused on the back of Clark's head, the only part of him he could really see over the shoulders of the crowd, and willed him to turn his way. It was of paramount importance that Clark look over his shoulder and see him standing here. Yes, Lex had respected Jonathan Kent and was sorry he was dead; but he had not come here to hold vigil from a distance. He had come here to be seen – and beckoned closer.

Clark had called him a coward once. Probably it was true. There was no other reason Lex should linger here, beside some crumbling monument, and wait for Clark to turn and notice him. A brave man would simply join the line of mourners, file with them past the casket and offer Clark his hand in front of everyone.

But Lex was not a martyr either, and he would not be spurned in front of a crowd of strangers – a crowd of strangers who all probably wished him very ill. There is a certain tolerance for risk that everyone has; a good businessman knows his. Lex knew some might call this calculating, but he himself knew better.

He had his own heart to protect, after all. No matter whether ill-wishing strangers might call its existence into doubt, Lex did have his own heart.

And if this distance – this space between his hand and Clark's shoulder – was the crime, he was not the only one guilty of it. He reminded himself of that as the cold seeped deeper, making his bones ache – he always would forget a scarf and gloves. No, he was not solely responsible. Clark had lied too, had kept secrets, had refused to meet Lex halfway, had cast his lot with Lex's enemies and turned his back on him.

Dead fathers notwithstanding, Clark too had much for which to ask Lex's forgiveness.

But Lex was not without compassion, and he could take the high road. He believed he already had started along it – it had brought him here. He could empathize quite dearly with Clark's loss; he too had lost people he had loved.

Among them was Clark.

No matter the quarrels between them, Lex had always loved Clark. He had forgiven him far more than he would ever have tolerated from anyone else, and he had let him closer than anyone else either. He had thought Clark loved him too; he had looked into the eyes of his darker half and still come to save him countless times. And everything Lex had done or said since they had last parted in friendship was motivated – perhaps barely perceptibly so, but at its very core and secret heart – by the desire to bring Clark around to face him again. Even if they only exchanged angry words now, at least he could hear Clark's voice.

He knew he had done things he shouldn't. But he was here now, in a moment where a person most needs his friends around him. He could see himself as a living monument to the potential they possessed. He had every hope that would be enough – if Clark would only turn and see him standing here.

The crowd was beginning to dissipate, and Lex felt the cold air catching in his throat. He watched Clark's dark hair, sharply visible through the swirling snow, waving gently as his head nodded over every hand he shook. Lex could almost hear his surrendered tone as he murmured honest gratitude to all their empty platitudes.

He still had not thought of anything better to say. He hoped the fact that he was here would mean enough to Clark that he wouldn't notice Lex, for once, ineloquent.

But as the last mourner drifted away, suddenly the dream-like scene became a nightmare – one where you could open your mouth to scream but no sound would come. Clark's hand slipped strongly around his mother's elbow, and the two of them walked slowly, simply, from the grave.

Lex took one stumbling step – perhaps he was in shadow, the crumbling marble obelisk concealing him …

It made no difference.

Clark never turned.


End file.
